Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)

I hope Mr. Hogan and his team have an open ear as they finalise their amendments on any of these issues. In terms of going beyond just raising some concerns, are there either forms of language or ways of measuring this that could assist in improving it further? I take Mr. Hussey's point that it is an improvement on what was there previously but, thinking about Dublin again, there is a problem if much of the residential development that people living and working in Dublin are currently buying is outside Dublin, in the commuter belt, which we can see is where a lot of the development is happening, and if large numbers of those people are still commuting into the centre of Dublin for work, school places, recreation or leisure. The idea of compact growth is not just to have higher levels of density but that people are living in greater proximity to all those other key aspects of their lives. We could end up having large volumes of compact growth but not necessarily getting the emission reductions bang for the buck we want because people are still being forced to commute from a compact growth centre in one location to a centre of life or interest elsewhere.

How can we help Mr. Hogan and his colleagues to think through that? I am conscious that in the most recent completion figures, Clondalkin had the highest volume of completions. Some of that is genuine compact growth because, as Mr. Hogan will know from his time on the council, lots of those people are living locally and there are services and amenities within the developments. However, we know from talking to people that many of them did not live anywhere close to where they bought but it was the only place they could afford, even with the very high prices to be found there. How do we resolve that or at least move it on a bit?